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Huntsman Cancer Institute at the is the only in the Mountain West, serving Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. It鈥檚 a large geographic area to cover, including both rural and urban populations.
Here, and at other medical centers across the country, an unsung workforce ensures that all patients have the best possible access to care鈥攃ommunity health workers.
鈥淐ommunity health workers are frontline public health workers who act as a bridge between health care systems and the community they are a part of,鈥 says Jill Christian, MPH, programs manager in Huntsman Cancer Institute鈥檚 Office of Community Outreach and Engagement (COE). 鈥淭hey are trusted members of a community who provide education and connect members to health and social resources through culturally appropriate messaging.鈥
For example, community health workers might provide translation assistance or act as consultants for finding the best sites for vaccinations and local community health fairs. They can explain a patient鈥檚 cultural practices to a health care provider鈥攁nd, conversely, guide a patient through the nuances of the health care system.
Community health workers aren鈥檛 typical professionals with health care training, like a nursing degree, though some do have experience in the field. In Utah, community health workers can become state certified after completing a skills training program and logging more than 300 hours of work experience.
鈥淲hen information comes from a community member who looks like you, understands your culture, your values, and your language, which makes them so impactful and successful in what they do,鈥 says Christian.
鈥淐ommunity health workers are a key way to address those gaps, especially in the rural and frontier areas across the area that we serve.鈥
Jill Christian, MPH
A community health worker鈥檚 role as an intermediary between communities and health care providers is especially important to the COE team. The team collaborates with community partners, patients, advocates, and clinicians to address cancer-related challenges across the Mountain West. They also build partnerships with state cancer coalitions and provide cancer education at community health events to improve access for all patients.
鈥淧art of the role of our COE team is doing outreach to communities and to address barriers in prevention services, like screenings, as well as patient access and care,鈥 says Christian. 鈥淎nd community health workers are a key way to address those gaps, especially in the rural and frontier areas across the area that we serve.鈥
Lynette Philips, manager of community cancer screening at Huntsman Cancer Institute, relies on community health workers to arrange appointments for the institute鈥檚 two mobile screening clinics. The clinics travel across the state of Utah to provide screening services like mammography to populations without ready access to care, including urban, rural, and frontier communities.
鈥淐ommunity health workers are absolutely essential. They identify women who need our services, navigate the process for them, and coordinate a day that we can travel to them and take care of them,鈥 says Philips. 鈥淲e鈥檙e only successful because we share in the goodwill that they have in their communities.鈥
Christian believes community health workers have the power to address broader barriers to cancer care. She has teamed up with Kamaile Tripp-Harris, manager of the community health worker program at the 亚洲自慰视频 of Utah鈥檚 Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, to provide cancer-related guidance to community health workers throughout the Mountain West. Tripp-Harris, a community health worker herself, oversees a team of contracted whose work is integrated into a medical student-run clinic under the direction of , patient-sensitive director of education for the .
鈥淥ur secret weapon is the passion and the love we have for our people and our communities.鈥
Kamaile Tripp-Harris
Christian and Tripp-Harris are training community health workers to better understand cancer prevention and treatment options, so that they can pass on up-to-date information to their communities. Christian and Tripp-Harris are also connecting community health workers across the region as part of Huntsman Cancer Institute鈥檚 Mountain West Cancer Collaborative, a network that connects patients, survivors, caregivers, and health professionals in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah, and Wyoming. In this virtual working group, community health workers can share perspectives and ideas.
鈥淭his new initiative can provide further training and education as needed in the community health worker workforce,鈥 says Tripp-Harris. 鈥淲e鈥檙e really trying to empower communities to understand the resources places like Huntsman Cancer Institute offer and reduce the stigma of cancer and other conditions.鈥
Most importantly, Tripp-Harris says, community health workers can help ease discomfort among community members who have had bad experiences with the health care system.
鈥淲hat we鈥檙e bringing to the table is deep connection, trust, and rapport. It takes a community health worker to bring the community along, and patients will follow because they trust this workforce,鈥 says Tripp-Harris. 鈥淥ur secret weapon is the passion and the love we have for our people and our communities.鈥